Thursday, October 29, 2009

Calvin has always loved riding trikes and bikes, but his balance isn't the best. He got a big-boy bike for his birthday 3 years ago, with heavy-duty training wheels attached. I've wondered if we'll ever be able to remove his training wheels, but I've also mentally prepared myself that he'll end up getting a 3-wheel bike at some point in the future as he gets bigger.

This year he's been really interested in his scooters - both a 2-wheel Razor and a 4-wheel 'skateboard with a post' type. He's gotten pretty good at them, and last week he even took my regular skateboard for a few pushes without falling down. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and we're going to try like heck this winter to learn to ride a 2-wheeler!

Here's the plan:

We bought this bike-trailer and took it for a spin last weekend. At the beginning of the ride, Calvin leaned so far to the side he almost took us both down! By the end of the ride, 45 minutes later, he was staying upright and we were moving along at a pretty good clip.

I think we can give him some balance/practice on this trailer, then work on using his current bike w/o training wheels. And we've got 6 months of great weather coming up to do it.

Can this trailer be Calvin's bridge to a 2-wheeler? (that and a lot of practice and patience!) I'll post an update in the spring...

Friday, October 9, 2009

This is one of my favorite stories ever. The video is a couple of years old, but a friend just sent it to me again, so I thought I'd share. If this doesn't bring a smile to your day, well... Just watch the video.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Mark Blaxill at AgeofAutism.comwrote an article this week that caught my eye. In fact, it did more than just catch my eye - it blew me away (even though the results shouldn't be too surprising..) Here's the short version...

Research studied 20 young male macaques' development after being vaccinated at birth with a dose of Merck’s Recombivax® hepatitis B vaccine to which a weight-adjusted amount of the ethyl mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal had been added (each dose included 2 micrograms of ethyl mercury as opposed to the human infant dose of 12.5 micrograms). 13 of the primates received the vaccination; 7 received either a placebo or no shot at all.

Over a two week period following birth, the researchers examined the infant macaques daily for their ability to perform nine basic reflexes (four reflexes were tested in two ways, so the paper reports thirteen performance results). Three of nine reflexes showed significant delays in vaccinated macaques while two other reflexes were delayed and “approached significance.” As for the three significant reflexes, vaccinated macaques learned more slowly to: 1) turn their head in response to a brush on the cheek (the root reflex); 2) open their mouth in response to a brush on the forehead (the snout reflex); and 3) suck on a nipple placed in their mouth (the suck reflex).

The article goes on to discuss more about the findings, what the researches want to take away from the study, and what NOT to take from the study. I encourage you to click through to read the full post.

I wrote a long time ago about the difficulty I have in believing ever-stronger vaccinations can be 100% safe, 100% of the time, for 100% of our children, especially when other medicines being developed fall so far short of these numbers. This week that argument gets even stronger..